Monday, December 28, 2015

Dear Professor Yancy......

I read with interest an article in The Opinion Pages of the New York Times entitledDear White America. It was written by George Yancy, a professor of philosophy at Emory University and a black man, which he feels (as apparently did the Times editorial board) somehow gives him special license to psychologize every white person alive and read him the riot act.

He does, of course, deny that this is what he is doing and even begins his missive by urging white readers to “listen with love” or “at least try.” Later on, he explains that his letter is “a gift” to us. He spends the next few paragraphs establishing his bona fides as a moral arbiter by revealing himself to be a dyed-in-the-wool sexist. The message underlying this admission is clear: If he is willing to own up to his own bigotry and biases, then whites, every last one of whom is racists should be willing to do the same.
He does his best to encourage me (and all white readers) to fully accept my racism and to search inside myself to learn why I feel as I do. It’s a rather lengthy essay explaining how and why I’ve come to be a racist. He tries to explain that I have to let go of my “white innocence” and instead to recognize the weight of my responsibility for those who “live under the yoke of my whiteness.” He is daring me to face my racism and to recognize the racist poison that is inside of me. He says that he doesn’t want to hear about how many black friends I have or even that being married to a black man or woman doesn’t exclude me from being a racist. In short, explains in detail, all of the reasons that I simply can’t NOT be a racist.
He doesn’t want to hear retorts of “what about the violence in black neighborhoods” or “Yancy is simply an angry black man.” He doesn’t want any rebuttal to his suppositions at all – in fact, they just aren’t germane to his points – those being that all white people are racists. He says that I should accept the racism within myself and recognize all of the trappings of racism that I try not to see – those things that bind me to forms of domination that I try to ignore. And then he asks, “White America, are you prepared to be at war with yourself, your white identity, your white power, your white privilege? His “letter” is just about what you’d expect from a professor of philosophy in a black university.

Okay Professor Yancy, I’ll play your game and readily admit that at times I've had feelings about people of your race you may or may not call bigoted. I'll also reiterate what you won't admit; that blacks who commit the growing amount of violence against whites just because they're white, are also wrong-hearted and racists. So, I suppose we're all in the same racist boat together, eh?

You'll understand that I was really interested to read this article, especially since I'd just recently viewed a video showing very  graphically three black women and three of their children savagely beat a white homeless man TO DEATH with a hammer and a chair leg. They kicked him in the head repeatedly and left him for dead.



Is it any wonder that I and many others feel the way we do sometimes when we witness this kind of subhuman savagery? Those savages who did this are supposed to be my equals? My peers? They are NOT of my species. They are NOT like me and I am NOT like them.

I work in a world of business with many black men of your generation or older, who accept America's racist past as it's history. But they, unlike yourself and many of your ilk who continue to turn a blind eye and refuse to own up to the failings of your own black cultural norms, work to better relations between the races rather than destroy what has been achieve by people who came before you. 

I for one have no patience for this kind of flowery bigoted anti-white tripe coming from someone in charge of educating the minds of our youth.  You make me sick.